Whilst writing part one of this article I got thinking about how in many computer games children and young people are taught to collect and win coins.
We’v already gone into the fact that computer games and gambling games are starting to merge into one, but maybe this started quite some time ago.
Is the ‘win win win’concept integrated into our brains from early childhood?
Whilst playing seemingly harmless computer games where we have to collect coins or complete missions to for them, are we actually being brainwashed?
We already touch on this slightly in one of our latest posts about ‘TV game shows’ but it seems the deeper we look into things the more we have been taught that gambling is some sort of core value of culture in society.
Even the bible mentions how the coin was used to distract, divide and control people and it seems that still thousands of years after and to this day that the desire for the coin has ruled over man’s state of mental and spiritual well-being.
Many of today’s computer games on both consoles and social networking sites use cleverly marketed slogans such as ‘Free coins’. With that along with playing computer games for a few years could we be being taught to learn that there’s always the chance to get money for free, and could also contribute to many of the gambling addiction stories where the victim thinks he’s playing because ‘he likes the challenge’?
It could also be perceived that not only are we seeing a narrowing gap between computer and gambling games, but also a narrowing gap between computer games and reality.
It’s not a new thing that people have expressed concerns about computer games and their impact on peoples moods and goal-directed behaviour.
But it seems that most of the time gamers are not taught the true value of money and how to use it responsibly, but instead learn that it’s something that is easy to come-by and that it can just be spend willy-nilly.
I can only think of a few games that contradict the above and those are games such as ‘The Sims’ and ‘Theme park’which are possibly the exception as they don't involve the hyper-mode coin collecting.
Another question we could ask is – how many computer games inspire people to hoard money and always need more?
Think about it, from the age of just a small child we play games where we're taught that if we collect the most coins that we’ll be the winner and that we’ll succeed. With a philosophy like that being taught to us all of our childhood then no wonder so many people fall right into the gambling industries lap and don't see any problems with what's going on in today's gambling-mad culture-programme.
Who designed these concepts? And why are children being taught so often that collecting the most coins makes them the winner?
Is this all just a coincidence?
